Mp3 this, Mp3 that. Is it really that bad?

[scott anthony]

I told him "a clock radio."

man. i TRY to make most everything i mix sound the way classic rock radio does on my clock radio.

Thanks. I feel better now.

Got even in the end. Mr. Fancy Engineer quit a year later just before prom season, a string of 50+ one nighters in a row where they booked for $3k a night. The leader called and begged me back. I did the gigs at 4x my regular rate, then used the cash to move from Maine to Manhattan and survive without a real job for 6 months.

Back to mp3s... yuck...

[I'm Painting Again]

Inspired by reading yet another anti-mp3 thread on gearslutz. Some people think we're doing a disservice to our nation's youth by making them grow up on mp3's. Sure other mediums can sound far superior, but:

When I was a kid, I listened to most of my music on an old cassette boom box with dreadful frequency response. It also played cassettes slightly too slow, so I had to figure out how to play songs by detuning my guitar about a quarter-step. I enjoyed it immensely and I wouldn't have traded it for the world.

Also, remember that speaker technology has improved dramatically since the days of our youth. Whether you're 24 or 64, you can get more speaker for far less money than you could have when you were growing up.

Mp3's don't sound one-tenth as fluorescent and funky as they did 5 years ago, and kids without amazing hi-fi systems have far better sound-reproduction equipment than they ever had in the past.

7 years ago I would have said I'd rather listen to AM radio or a scratched-to-death vinyl record over an mp3. I can't say that now.

Keep things in perspective, people. It ain't that bad.

What kind of system did you grow up with?

I've cataloged most of my CD collection into iTunes as 192 AAC files. Can I tell the difference in an ABX test? Sometimes... but, does it truly hinder my listening experience?

Not at all.

I think a well recorded track will translate to MP3 better than a shittily recorded one..

there is a lot to be said about the printing/mastering to mp3 process as well..

Yeah I don't think it's that bad either..but mp3 sure doesn't sound like vinyl or a 1/2" master tape played on a bitchin' machine..

[A-Barr]

I wonder if they could be improved further by mastering to that format. I know nobody would want to, but considering the master is reduced to 16/44.1 and then that gets reduced to mp3, seems like a better mp3 might be possible by skipping the middle step.

[scott anthony]

I make mp3s for my mastering clients from directly within SawStudio all the time. The session rate must be on 44.1khz (might work on 48, never tried, def. does not work at higher rates), I leave it on 24bit sometimes and am pretty sure it's truncated to 16 anyways before encoding.

Short answer? Doesn't make a difference to me with my current toolset.

Steve Berson may chime in and confirm...

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i've made mp3s off of 32 bit float masters a bunch of times and they seemed fine...

[markmeat]

I wonder if they could be improved further by mastering to that format. I know nobody would want to, but considering the master is reduced to 16/44.1 and then that gets reduced to mp3, seems like a better mp3 might be possible by skipping the middle step.

I just dumped a bunch of mixes to MP3 straight off the 32-bit mixes and they sounded a whole world better... there's definately something to that "skipping the middle step"

MEAT

[RefD]

the 48k rate works fine.

[vier-personen]

yesterday I was filling my new ipod with cds and converted tracks to aac at 128kbs.
I was shocked that I couldn?t hear a difference
I mean, the material was electronic dance kinda stuff, and my room is not the best treated (though I have tannoy ellipse10 monitors), but neither on the akg k701 headphones I couldn?t tell the difference.
I?m sure I will hear the difference clearly when I will import my bartok string quartets played by the arditti 4... I mean I HAVE to hear the difference!

[SpencerBenjamin]

When I was at High School my girlfriend at the time taped for me from her dad's record collection Miles Davis's 'Kind of Blue'. I had a bad habit of not snapping the tabs (remember how you'd have to cover them in tape...?) and alot of my tapes had couple-of-second blank spots when I'd accidentally pressed Record (which automatically pushed in the play button).

I still get surprised when I hear 'So What' without the 'edit'...

[vvv]

Just as an aside, I do a lot of internet collaboration recording and sometimes, for convenience and speed, I receive *.mp3 (I refer to them as "Empty3") files.

I've noticed that if there is just one or two tracks in a mix that started as Empty3, (I always up-convert to 32bit float *.wav), and especially if they are effected in the mix, there is no problem, although the Empty3 process seems to "thin" out things like vocals and guitars, kind of like intentionally using an EQ setting.

However, where I have done reference mixes from all Empty3 tracks, it sounds bad, just "thin", lacking depth and clarity and sometimes having distortion (especially kick drums and cymbals), although again, converting to 32bit float *.wav and adding effects can improve the results some.

But Empty3 is a great medium for size and convenience, and I do believe that the Empty3's I hear lately are better for some reason, but I refuse to even own an I-Pod; I carry around a CD Walkman and about 5 CD's on my commute.

[A-Barr]

You know, you can put wav's and aiff's and apple lossless files on an ipod too. I really do prefer using a hard drive to store and play music, it doesn't have to be mp3, at home I've got an imac with all my old cd's loaded into it at Apple Lossless, which I think is actually truly lossless, and the convenience is huge.

I wish variable bit rate formats were more common. I work at a business that handles vast amounts of audio tracks in multiple file formats, I brought up using VBR's one time as an alternative to mp3's and while everyone agreed they sounded better and saved about as much space as mp3's, on average, the fact that you could not predict how much storage you would need for a given number/duration of tracks made it impractical for us, so MP3 it was.

Another fun project was deciding what upsampling program to use to convert 44.1k tracks up to 48k. Out of the ones we tried, ProTools sounded the best, followed closely by Bias Peak, but as we got further away from pro audio production software and more towards batch processing or consumer-level software, the quality dropped off pretty steeply. Upsampling to 48k can actually sound just as bad as an mp3, believe it or not.

[chris harris]

I refuse to even own a car. If I'm going somewhere that's too far to walk, then just bring me my horse.

I refuse to even go to a grocery store. If I get hungry, I hunt and kill my own food.

I refuse to even take medicine. If I get sick, I die like a man.

I refuse to even use the internet. wait....

[vvv]

Yeah, and I started a thread over the summer and did learn you can put *.wavs on an I-Pod, etc.

But then you don't have the art-work and liner notes; damnit, I'm working hard to get my name on some!

Also, there is the time involved in ripping because I also refuse to purchase downloads.

And I do not steal them, either.

[A-Barr]

And I do not steal them, either.

Good for you. Seriously.

These days if I only have something on CD, I get pretty nervous about it not having a backup!

[vier-personen]

I refuse to even own a car. If I'm going somewhere that's too far to walk, then just bring me my horse.

I like the subway, bus, train, plane, taxi.

I refuse to even go to a grocery store. If I get hungry, I hunt and kill my own food.

I like the organic vegetables delivered to my flat each week and the italian restaurant down my street (the odd d?ner is ok sometimes)

I refuse to even take medicine. If I get sick, I die like a man.

when I die I?ll die like a dog, crying.

I refuse to even use the internet. wait....

man, I hate that shit as well, keeps me from actually getting work done.. bah, don?t bring on the topic of mobile phones...